


Upstairs, Downstairs

by the_glow_worm



Category: Temeraire - Naomi Novik
Genre: M/M, Servants, outsider pov
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-21
Updated: 2019-02-21
Packaged: 2019-10-26 03:37:00
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,537
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17738267
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/the_glow_worm/pseuds/the_glow_worm
Summary: Mr. Tharkay was entirely clever, entirely self-sufficient, and the Admiral was a true gentleman, respectful and warm towards the servants without being permissive, and they were both, Mary supposed, very great men in their own rights. It was only that, when they were together, she couldn't fail to think that they were not in their right mind.Tenzing Tharkay, William Laurence, and the servants that observe them.





	Upstairs, Downstairs

**Author's Note:**

  * For [smaragdbird](https://archiveofourown.org/users/smaragdbird/gifts).



Any situation she could get was one to be grateful for, to be sure, but there was no denying that it was rather a queer place, was Càrncross House. Mary had thought so from her very first glimpse of the place, an old run-down manor at the top of the hill with a dragon curled around it, sleeping. 

 

Well. The sight had taken her aback, to be sure, but Temeraire soon made a point to give a speech to all the assembled servants telling them that he was certainly not going to do anything so revolting as to _eat_ any of them, and they were only in danger of being squashed if they were silly enough to get in under his feet, so they had better not be ninnies about the fact that he _was_  a dragon, and he hoped none of them would be very dull, if he wanted a little conversation in the evenings. It would have felt silly to be afraid after that. 

 

In fact, Mary reflected as she rearranged the wood by the fire, the more time she spent in Càrncross House, the more convinced she became that Temeraire was the most, perhaps the only, sensible person of any of the masters.

 

Oh, she didn't mean any disrespect to the Admiral, who was all that was considerate in an employer, and a hero besides. All the girls down the village were spitting with envy, and demanded to know everything about him. Once, while the Admiral was out hunting with Mr. Tharkay, Mary had measured the width of the shoulders on his sporting coat with a tied-off piece of string and brought it down with her to the village. All the girls had stared wide-eyed, at the width of it, and the village boys, all unknowing, had acquired yet another invisible standard to be compared against.

 

And Mary did not think anyone in their senses could not say that Mr. Tharkay was not very clever. The rumor was that he had lived in the wild after the disinheritance, for years, and talked only with birds and wild animals; certainly he did seem to have a knack for goshawks and falcons. There was a mews in the old stables, and its inhabitants scared her more than the dragon ever did. That was the least wild of the rumors. She'd heard that he'd summoned a pack of devils from the mountains, who made every soldier in Danzig disappear overnight. Tommy Grefthill had once heard that he had gone to Timbuktoo, and nearly become a king there, but had to settle for this old house in Scotland as a second choice, and that seemed as plausible as anything else. Mary was a little frightened of him, to tell the truth. He was an odd man to serve. He laid his own fires and dressed and undressed himself, he seemed as content with an old cold meal as with anything Putnam could produce from the kitchens, and if he cared a jot whether the furniture was dusted within the hour or within the fortnight, he never seemed to show it. The footman who doubled as a valet was used mostly, as far as Mary could tell, for the comfort of his houseguest.

 

No, Mr. Tharkay was entirely clever, entirely self-sufficient, and the Admiral was a true gentleman, respectful and warm towards the servants without being permissive, and they were both, Mary supposed, very great men in their own rights. It was only that, when they were together, she couldn't fail to think that they were not in their right mind. 

 

They would go out hunting, for example, for hours; but while anyone would expect even a gentleman of leisure to bring back a brace of coneys or pheasants to put into the stock, for all their work, they would invariably come back empty-handed, without having fired a single bullet: convenient for them, as they hardly ever brought along a footman to help them reload. Mary knew this because Tommy, on whom the duty would have fallen, was gravely disappointed; he had been looking forward to seeing such a storied military man shoot.

 

And then there were mealtimes, which they always took together, sometimes in the old wood-paneled dining room, and sometimes in Temeraire's heated pavillion. The Admiral always sat on Mr. Tharkay's right side, and kept his eyes fixed on Mr. Tharkay's hands.

 

Mr. Tharkay had some old injury to his hands, perhaps from the war. In this deep winter cold they moved so stiffly that Mary was reminded of her old gran, down in the village, who had the gout in her knuckles so bad that they were permanently swelled up and she couldn't do the sewing anymore. But that was an old man's disease, and Mr. Tharkay wasn't so old as that, surely. Sometimes none of them even noticed his difficulty. Mr. Tharkay did everything with a smooth grace; it was easy to miss the clumsiness of his hands. But the injuries, whatever they were, made his fingers ill-suited for the knife and fork, and although the master himself never betrayed the slightest impatience or anger, the slow process of eating was painful to watch. Mary felt it, herself, although of course it was more than her place was worth to offer to help. But Admiral Laurence seemed to feel it tenfold, his hands tightening around his own utensils until they had gone white, sharp lines of displeasure and helplessness carving themselves on his face. He clearly could not bring himself to offer, even when it was clear that Mr. Tharkay was never going to ask, so mealtimes were a strained, silent affair, with conversation moved along only by Temeraire's blithe comments. Mr. Tharkay would answer quite normally, but Admiral Laurence only had tense replies, his eyes never leaving Mr. Tharkay. Mary always went away from it shaking her head.

 

After a few weeks of this, the two had, somehow, reached a silent compromise. In the sitting room before the fire, where their chairs were arranged facing out into the tall windows that showed the mountains overhead and the snow coming down in whispering drafts, Mr. Tharkay would sit and peel off his gloves. They invariably had the servants out of the room for this; they needed no fires tended, and no nightcaps brought, and most of the servants were eager to seek out their own warm beds anyhow. But Mary had passed by the door, once, when an errant draft had pushed it slightly ajar. Within she had seen Admiral Laurence on his knees before Mr. Tharkay's chair, a jar of warm tallow lotion beside him. Their hands were together. The Admiral was slowly working the tallow into Mr. Tharkay's knuckles, massaging as he went, tender and slow, as if to will the joints back into their rightful place. The fire gilded his upturned profile, turning his hair into shining gold and easing away the lines of worry on his face until he looked like a man half his age, with something open and aching and terribly young in his eyes. Mary couldn't see Mr. Tharkay's face, but she could see clearly the way his hands uncurled when the Admiral held them, open palms held out as if in offering, and how they trembled a little. Mary walked on: she would have liked to gossip about it if she could, but there was almost nothing to report. She didn't have the words for what she saw in that sitting room. 

 

"The master's gotten himself some salve for his fingers," she told the others the next morning, and everyone nodded and declared that it was about time, and that if it only wasn't an impertinence, they would have given him their old family recipe, which worked wonders.

 

Mr. Tharkay's hands did seem better at supper the following night, and the Admiral able to sound even a little light-hearted in their conversation. That was perhaps another odd thing: Mr. Tharkay could perfectly well have a servant help him with his fingers. But, she supposed, with gentlemen and their odd, proud ways, she couldn't possibly guess what one might take it into their heads to do or not do. Himself was lucky to have such a kind houseguest, and that was all.

 

Yet increasingly 'houseguest' seemed like the wrong word. The other night Clara had said 'the master' when she had meant the Admiral, and instead of correcting herself she said "Oh--I mean the _other_  master," and that had seemed perfectly right to all the other servants. Temeraire, who was attached to the Admiral in some way that Mary did not understand, did not seem particularly to think of leaving at all, except temporarily, for the Season in London. And now that she considered the very great inconvenience of having a dragon on an estate, it was also, perhaps, strange to build an entire pavilion for the use of a single houseguest, especially as so much needed to be done around the grounds already. Mary had begun to realize that she had gotten entirely the wrong idea somehow.

 

That was alright, she supposed; gentlemen had as much right to their secrets as anyone. Her ma used to say that, from when she served in the house when it belonged to Mr. Tharkay's grandfather, who had filled the stables with expensive horses that ate through gold like hay. Mr. Tharkay and Admiral Laurence were kinder employers than they needed to be, with days off every other week to visit their families in their village, and wages that were fair, although Tommy liked to complain a little for show about the Admiral's unreasonable fastidiousness when it came to starching and ironing properly. And perhaps Temeraire was sometimes a tyrant about making the servants polish all his things over and over again, keeping them rubbing at some invisible stain until he was satisfied, but he was also always strangely ready to talk with them, in a way that the Admiral and even Mr. Tharkay were not, asking them many questions about their lives, and their families, and quizzing their opinions of the politics of the land as if they had a say in it.

 

Mary was even beginning to be fond of Càrncross House itself, strange old derelict that it was, with its horribly old-fashioned furniture and its stair-steps that were beginning to warp around the middle. It had been hard to like, at first sight. The doors creaked at their openers like angry old men, and the wallpaper peeling from the walls gave the hallways a dour look. But behind the ancient wallpaper had been beautifully preserved panels of oak, slowly revealing themselves in strips as they worked to remove the wallpaper, and recently Mary had spent an afternoon going from room to room and oiling all the hinges. The ceilings were whitewashed, to make more use of what light wandered in, and bit by bit the character of Càrncross House revealed itself. Hard to like, perhaps, but ultimately easy to love.

 

* * *

 

 

Mary had not seen the masters all day. That wasn't strange, particularly; Mr. Tharkay in particular was prone to disappearing fits. The first time he had seemingly vanished the servants had turned the house upside-down looking for him, fearing that some old floorboard or rafter had finally given way, only to find him calmly perusing the books in the old library, which they had searched a dozen times before then. By now they had all accepted that they worked for a man who walked in and out of the walls like the very devil. Mary hadn't even thought about the fact that neither of the masters had appeared at breakfast, although Temeraire had fleetingly inquired. If she had given it a second's thought, she would have supposed that they were out hunting again, despite the snow.

 

But if they had been out hunting, they very evidentially had returned; Mary could hear voices in Mr. Tharkay's bedchamber through the half-open door. She was meant to clean it, and had brought up her broom and rags and all up the stairs, but not even Mr. Tharkay would tolerate having a servant burst in on him. Mary decided to start with the Admiral's room, even though she normally saved it for last, like a treat. The Admiral's room was always easy to clean, it was. He never tracked in any mess if he could help it, and always laid out his linens neat, so Mary only had to fold them and tuck them in. 

 

When she entered the Admiral's room, however, it was a little bit more than just neat. The chair was tucked in neatly beneath the writing desk, the Admiral's clothes were nowhere to be seen, and there was no new ash in the fireplace. Mary turned slowly around the room, taking it in. The corners of the bed were as square and neat as she had made them the day before. It hadn't been slept in.

 

After a moment's thought, calmly, she propped the broom and rags in a corner and ran down to the kitchen.

 

"Tommy," she said; he was playing cards with Pat, because they were both as lazy as cats. "Did you valet the Admiral this morning?"

 

"Why, no," said Tommy, laying down the queen with a flourish. "He didn't ring for me. I haven't seen him all day," he added, and Pat nodded.

 

"Oh," said Mary.

 

"He's not asking for me, is he?" asked Tommy, suddenly worried.

 

"No, no," said Mary hastily. "Although it's a fine valet that's playing cards in front of the kitchen fire instead of tending to the wardrobe!"

 

Tommy looked guilty momentarily, and then shrugged. "It's cold upstairs," he said, as if that explained anything.

 

So Mary walked back upstairs, more slowly this time, deep in thought. It _was_  cold upstairs, too cold to pass a night without being in a bed, and Mary was sure the Admiral didn't go out of doors last night. She went up to the doors of all the guest rooms, just in case, but they hadn't been slept in either. Finally she went back to the half-open door of Mr. Tharkay's room, half-unwillingly, and looked inside.

 

This bed had been most decidedly slept in. A small sea of blankets spilled over all its edges, and at its center there were the forms, bare above the blankets, of Mr. Tharkay and the Admiral. Mary had never seen the Admiral with so much as one golden hair out of its neat queue, but now it was spilling out in a shining river over the pillow. Mr. Tharkay had just one lock of it around his finger, twisting and releasing it. His own head was pillowed on the Admiral's hand. They were talking in soft inaudible murmurs, interrupted occasionally by the soft movement of the Admiral's thumb across Mr. Tharkay's lips. Mary had never seen him smile so. 

 

They were both smiling, in fact, looking into each other's faces with eyes that were soft and melting. They did not see her at all. 

 

Mary backed away, and silently closed the door. There was something a little strange in Càrncross House, perhaps, but it was not that. 

 


End file.
